Taken by the Vampyren (The Vampyren Invaders Book 1)

by Seth Eden

  He was one of the warriors.

  Danton rode the crest of his rage and roared along with his brethren.

  9

  CASSI

  T here was food. That was the first thing.

  Cassi hadn't expected ever to go back to the house on Spring Street, but the first thing after having been asked if there was anything she'd miss was being told to go back and collect anything worthwhile.

  She figured that would be fine. She and Brecca were going together, first her house, then Brec's. Her best friend had lived alone before the Vampyren came, and her apartment was probably either thrashed or colonized even though she'd only been gone one night.

  They were being sent a guard. His name was Michael and he was almost as big as the Vampyren, over six feet easily. Blond hair, shocking blue eyes, a very strong chin with a shallow cleft and she thought if he ever smiled, he'd have dimples.

  No way to prove that, though. He was polite and distant and smiled at nothing. He made both Cassi and Brecca feel like looking over their shoulders time after time.

  He followed them on the bike, keeping a distance, parking the van around the corner and coming to Cassi's parents' house through backyards. There was no one left in the neighborhood to object to the trespass.

  He tapped on the glass door and Brec let him in while Cassi foraged. Her father had been something of an end of the world hoarder so there were bottles of water in the garage, treated somehow so they didn't go stagnant but always smelled slightly of Clorox. There were cans of beans and jars of salted meat and dried fruits, then he'd started buying MRE – Meals Ready to Eat.

  "This is a treasure trove," Michael said. "Pile everything in the center of the garage and I'll bring the van around when we're ready to load."

  The afternoon heated up while Brec worked in the kitchen, salvaging first aid kits and canned goods Cassi hadn't eaten during her months alone.

  Cassi worked with Michael, their hands touching as they moved crates of silvery military grade packaged food into piles, their eyes meeting again over a bottle of water or a box of her clothes she'd thought she might diet into. They probably fit now – the alien invasion diet was great for making her lose her appetite – but she thought donating them to anyone who could wear them would be better than wearing the memories they'd bring back.

  As the afternoon progressed, as they became more hot and sticky, she noticed their hands lingered more with the innocent brushes against each other. Hands. Then eyes. Until Cassi went inside to get a glass of water and found Brecca had fallen asleep on the living room sofa.

  She went back into the garage with a glass for Michael and stood watching him as he drank. Watching the way his throat moved. His lips, with one drop of water he licked off, his eyes not leaving hers.

  His hands on the glass, long fingers, corded forearms slicked with sweat.

  He handed her back the glass, his fingers grazing hers. She put it down without looking, heard the plastic tumbler roll to the garage floor even as she reached for him.

  His mouth on hers was salty and sweet. He had full lips that covered hers. His tongue snaked into her mouth and found hers.

  She pressed herself against him, feeling her nipples harden and her body responded to his, heartrate speeding up, pulse jumping, her legs feeling weaker, like she needed him to hold her up. The heat inside her increased. Her body felt liquid, giving, ready to receive.

  They jerked apart from each other when they heard Brecca coming toward them from the house, calling out that she'd fallen asleep but now she was awake, what could she do to help and make up for her dereliction of duty?

  She stopped in the doorway, looking out at them as if she sensed something had changed but wasn't quite sure what.

  Cassi licked her lips. Michael gestured at the piles they'd made and asked if Brecca would finish out the last of the useables from the house while he went to get the van.

  By the time he'd left, Brec was smothering a smile. When his running footsteps died away, she gave a tilted half smile at Cassi. "Did I interrupt something there?"

  And Cassi, inclined to dissemble until she knew for certain, decided life was too uncertain at the moment to know anything except that Brec was her best friend.

  "I don't know," she said honestly, looking out the open garage door where Michael had gone. "But I hope so."

  Back at the redesigned boutique, they started training. First was the trial by fire self-defense workshop for Brecca, who complained she felt like she'd fallen into a video game. At the end of two weeks she was moving less like a confident rebel and more like somebody's arthritic grandmother.

  "I never wanted to be a warrior like you," she half-kidded Cassi while they tried to fall asleep in the tiny room they shared.

  "Get out."

  "No, seriously. I've always admired your bad-assery. I just never wanted to copy it."

  Maybe, Cassi thought. But Brecca was doing something she wasn't sharing anything about. Because she'd disappear for hours on end, especially at twilight, and come back lit as if she were drunk. That seemed to be some kind of confidence rush.

  It was hard not to ask. But Brec was her best friend. When she was ready to confide, she would.

  Until then, Cassi thought she might enjoy watching her best friend train as a warrior. Vividly she remembered her first days in martial arts. Watching it on Brecca was amusing. Brecca was currently trying to pound the cot into something resembling comfortable.

  "Eventually it becomes a kind of obsession," she told Brec. "If you don't train, you don't feel right." She smothered a smile, waiting.

  Brecca threw her a look that said You're out of your damned mind. She rolled over on the cot and groaned. "My teeth even hurt. Is that even possible?"

  Cassi just grinned. Martial arts did that. Whatever she might say, Brec was a runner and she was in good shape. She'd figure it all out.

  Meanwhile Cassi needed to figure out Michael. Because this seemed like a really bad time to get involved with someone but the whole time Brecca was training in mixed martial arts, Cassi was learning to handle firearms. Brecca didn't have to – before the war she'd had two very gun nut brothers who collected, were responsible with and seemed to love their handguns and rifles. They didn't hunt. They never went crazy and killed anybody. And as far as Brecca knew, she sometimes kidded, they'd never robbed any banks. "Or if they did, they didn't share with me."

  Which was to say Brecca didn't have to have firearms training, so it was just Cassi Michael was training how to handle firearms.

  And Michael was handling her. Showing her how to aim, how to fire, how not to jerk at the expected explosion and when to breathe, he stood behind her, his arms circling her, and sometimes he moved close enough his heat enveloped her more than the sultry summer heat.

  Sometimes she could feel how hard he was, pressed up against her, and she'd turn in the circle of his arms and face him. Mouth to mouth, before they'd pull back and study each other, eyes full of want and questions.

  Routinely someone interrupted them. Routinely Cassi thought she saw the same mix of frustration and relief in Michael's eyes that was in her own.

  It just wasn't the right time, her mind said.

  Fuck that, and fuck me too, her body said.

  She hadn't said anything to Brecca about it because she didn't know what to say. Brec would probably tell her to jump him because it would diffuse the tension and let them get on with Cassi's training.

  Or it would start something new and add a different level of tension but at least they'd know they could take care of it.

  And there was a logic there, except that she and Brecca had different ideas about sex. Brecca was more masculine about it, Cassi always thought – if it felt good, she did it, and didn't see the problem. Guys did it. Why shouldn't she?

  Cassi had tried that, fresh out of high school and wanting to be out of her parents' house, but found intimacy mixed with emotions of her.

  It still did.

  And she d
id not want to get attached to Michael.

  A t the end of the third week, reports were coming in across the grapevine that reached them even in the cut off section of new recruits. Across the city there were attacks, anywhere Vampyren gathered, and there were body counts rising.

  So far, none of the people in the hall where they were staying admitted to knowing anything about the attacks, but rumors were they were women perpetrating them, who were able to get in and out maybe as a part of whatever vile entertainment the vampires had put together.

  "They'll figure it out before much longer, and be able to stop them," Val opined. She was a tiny Asian girl with attitude to spare and sometimes hung out in their room at night.

  "Maybe," Brecca said. "But they haven't caught them this far and they don't seem to be doing the same thing twice."

  "How do you know?" Cassi asked, but the answer was obvious before the question was finished.

  If the Vampyren had caught any of the women doing the killing, news of the public executions would be all over the news and all over the unofficial gossip networks that ran through everything anymore.

  There'd be no way to miss it.

  "You think they're -- ?" Val asked and circled a finger around in the air to signify the place they were and the people all three of them were training with.

  "If so, they're doing a good job of keeping it secret," Cassi said and Brecca echoed the sentiment, though a little slowly, Cassi thought.

  And wondered.

  At the end of the third week, Michael came to get her in the evening before dinner.

  "Last minute test on guns and weapons," he said, leading her to the firing range. "Because tomorrow, you're headed out."

  The boredom that had been creeping up on her, the in-a-rut feeling like she'd had before the invasion ever happened, evaporated like a freak snowfall landing on Los Angeles.

  Suddenly she was terrified and wide awake.

  "What if I'm not ready?" Her fingers were curling into fists and opening again as she tagged after him, heading up the hall that was lit by emergency generator lights.

  "I'd tell you," he said simply, and headed into the firing range.

  It wasn't usually in use in the evening, but he wanted to give her one last run-through at assembling and taking apart the weapons and check out her handling of them one more time as well.

  They stood together in familiar stances, firing side by side, and Michael put his own gun down, coming around to stand behind her one more time, correcting the tiniest of movements that couldn't possibly matter because no way the vampires were going to let her get into a firing stance and take the time for a countdown and deep breath.

  She started to say that, the gun still pointed down in her hands, the safety still on, when he kissed the back of her neck.

  So lightly. Like a butterfly grazing her skin.

  She hadn't felt anything that gentle and light since the invasion had changed the world overnight.

  She couldn't help wanting the drama, where the girl drops everything and the man sweeps her into his arms and carries her away.

  There was no away for him to carry her to, and if she dropped everything, someone would get shot.

  But there was a minimum of time wasted holstering their weapons and hanging those holsters in safety lockers.

  They had more privacy in the firing cubicle than they would if they left it. Everywhere they went in the boutique was full of people and the underground storage turned into a safe zone and the firing range, storage and weapons lockers.

  Or maybe it never occurred to them to go anywhere else. The instant the guns were secured he did sweep her into his arms and she did forget about everything else. Her hands traced the muscles in his chest, palms sliding up hard over pecs to traps, her fingers in his hair for an instant before she had her arms around his neck, pulling herself higher and harder up his body.

  Michael's hands ran over her braid, the thick rope of dark auburn she kept tightly controlled. He released the tie on it, combed through it with his fingers, letting it fall in waves around her face, the whole time kissing her.

  His mouth was warm, his tongue meeting hers felt like magic, an electrical connection that sent sparks racing through her body to surface at unexpected points. She wanted him to kiss the inside of her wrists, the point inside her elbow where blood might be drawn, where bi-monthly taxes were taken out at local blood banks. She wanted, just for a minute, to erase the Vampyren and their mark on the world, to pretend they'd met through some other crisis or some other exercise she put herself through. Martial arts could have turned to learning to shoot without ever having lost the planet to aliens.

  His hands on her back pulled her close, fumbled at her clothes. There was no time for anything tender or slow. Neither of them was looking for delicate.

  His mouth on her throat was a sharp surprise, a nip, as if claiming territory. She laughed and clawed at his back, grabbed fistfuls of his t-shirt and hauled it over his head until her hands were on flesh.

  Clothes came off in uneven amounts, the two of them coming together to lick and suck and bite at what was already exposed, to touch and shudder at unexpected pleasures, just the feel of human flesh. In the year since the Vampyren came, hooking up became a lost art. There were enough compromised humans to make anyone new something of a threat, or at least someone to beware of.

  Her mind churned, visions of the last weeks playing frantic behind them, everything that had led her to this place and this minute.

  And then her wild thoughts caught up to the moment and there was nothing but Michael's mouth kissing down her naked torso, the warmth of his breath, the rough feel of tongue and teeth lapping at her breasts, then biting lightly.

  Where once she had liked to be held down, her wrists maybe locked together over her head by one strong masculine hand while the other roamed her body, taking liberties and bringing fire, now she craved the freedom to move and response and not to feel the fear of being held down.

  She'd been untouched by the aliens. But it had been too long since she was touched by anyone else.

  Into her hair, he said, "I've wanted this since I met you.'

  She breathed out an agreement, even as he backed her into a wall and ran both hands down her back, his hands caressing her hips, then following the curve of her ass to pull her up into his arms, her back braced against the wall, her legs locking around his waist as his erection found her slick, hot folds and teased her for an endless, decadent second before he slid hard into her.

  She gasped, feeling the fullness of him, how hard and huge he felt, as if she were a virgin again it had been so long.

  Instead of closing her eyes, she leaned her head back and looked into his, and found him looking back, both of them half crazed and half aware of themselves and each other, of pleasure and lust.

  He took up a rhythm, pumping into her, making her grunt and lock herself around him more tightly. At that angle, he managed to graze her clit with every thrust, making her spark with pleasure, her hands locked around him as if he held her above a giant chasm, not just against a wall.

  She never lost herself. It wasn't passion, it was physical release, it was emotional connection. In another time and place they might have met and spent a few weeks at dating only to hook up and move on.

  Somehow in their altered world, it now meant both more and less. The freedom to be human and the knowledge there was nothing here that would last.

  The moment was enough. When she came, the boutique, the training, the fear, the Vampyren, everything faded and blacked out for an instant, there was nothing but the feel of his cock emptying itself inside her, her own body pulsing and ripping with pleasure.

  They slid down the wall together, and what should have been a scramble at clothes or an embarrassment at excess turned into something else.

  She lay in the curl of his arms. One arm circled her shoulders, her head on his chest. The other played down her body. She watched his hand move, the tiny blond hairs cat
ching the relentless overhead light. His long fingers stroked the skin along her collarbone as if there was time for subtleties and pleasure.

  His hand grazed her breast, slid down her flat belly and came back up to cup her breast, thumb flicking over the nipple until that sensation buzzed hot and electric, sending want through her again.

  She stirred, starting to reach, but he leaned up on one elbow over her, kissing her mouth, pushing her down so he pleasured her, taking his time. His hand continued down her body, caressing the inner curl of her hip. She moved under him, the anxious need to hurry changing to a hunger to feel his touch everywhere, to experience whatever he chose to give.

  He stroked down her legs, fingers massaging muscles there that ached from daily training. That was almost as pleasurable as sex itself, she thought.

  Until his hand came back up, this time on the inside of her thighs. His thumb went unerringly to her clit. His fingers curled so they could play at her entrance, just touching, not entering, until she made little noises, pushing herself up so she could find his mouth, kissing him, her hands now running down his sides, pulling him close, then pushing him off, far enough that she could feel him hard between them, ready again, slick from their mingled juices already, hard and thick so she could wrap her fingers around him, squeezing and then stroking up and down.

  He moaned into her mouth, his hands stilling, then changed his angle so he could slide his fingers inside her, making her moan into his mouth, her legs opening wider as if more of him could press up inside her, filling her.

  He didn't break the kiss but his fingers grazed her gently, pulling away, and he moved so he covered her body with his, his erection now between her legs, his forearms on either side of her head as he kissed her and arched up, positioning himself before he slid inside her, filling her.

  Her legs went around his, pulling him tight into her, trapping him there, limiting his range of motion and her range of response, so he thrust into her, as if only thrusting in, and in, and in, never out, only burying himself deeper inside her.